Cook County Clerk of Circuit Court Dorothy Brown is defending a program in her office meant to collect money for charities. That cash is collected from employees who want to wear jeans to work.

Today’s not a Jeans Day, but Brown spent the morning talking about it to reporters. The program allows Brown’s employees to wear jeans on Fridays if they pay $2 or more.

Brown says the more than $40,000 collected is used for employee parties or donated to charities.

BROWN: We track it this way. What happens is, when they collect, they put the dollar amount in the person’s name, and then there’s a total there.

But published reports say Brown’s employees see the jeans day collection as a shakedown. They say there’s no good way to track the money.

Brown passed out documents to reporters showing how much money is deposited into bank accounts, but those documents don’t show how much money was collected.

Brown is running for Cook County Board President.